


Secret Agent Man

by sparklyslug



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternative Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklyslug/pseuds/sparklyslug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki has tried to tell anyone who will listen. That it makes no sense for Stark to be his handler. Stark is not a member of this intelligence organization. He’s not trained in any of this. He’s wildly egomaniacal, unpredictable, unorthodox, and constantly flaunting his own authority or flouting someone else’s. </p><p>Sounds a little familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret Agent Man

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt from vilefangirl: Post-avengers, Loki is captured by SHIELD and becomes and agent to work off his sentence. Plus frostiron smooches, of course
> 
> The timeline is all over the place. It's like Thor2 never happened, some of IM3 did, Avengers kind of did, and who knows where Cap2 is.

His earpiece clicks on with a tinny whine. Loki’s unfortunately too used to it by now to react. 

“ _Not too shabby, Agent,”_ There’s a sound of chewing, and a burp worthy of an Asgardian. “ _Takes off, what, five years? What’s the exchange rate these days on mass murder to time to the dollar?”_

"Falk promised me seven," Loki says, wiping down his blade and dropping it off the roof. It vanishes before it hits the sidewalk, not that anyone down there would be looking up anyway. "Remind me, when can we expect him back? It’s not that I don’t enjoy these little chats with you. I just do _not_ enjoy these little chats with you.”

“ _Still on that recon bit, and I’m still on about three-fifths of a working pair of legs, so we’re stuck with each other for now,”_ Stark sounds downright cheerful. “ _Now get back here so I can explain to you exactly how sloppy that op was. Natasha’s in town, and she’s here drawing up some diagrams. She’s got your hair real good.”_

_“_ Oh,  _wonderful_.”

~

Loki has tried to tell anyone who will listen. That it makes no sense for Stark to be his handler. Stark is not a member of this intelligence organization. He’s not trained in any of this. He’s wildly egomaniacal, unpredictable, unorthodox, and constantly flaunting his own authority or flouting someone else’s. Just because he's injured, no longer wrapped in metal, and apparently useless to everyone else doesn't mean he should be  _Loki's_ problem. 

"Hmmm. That does all sound terribly familiar. I wonder why. Does that sound at all familiar to you, Mr. Laufeyson? Whyever could it be ringing so many bells? I just don’t know."

Loki scowls. ”I should have known better than to take this up with  _you_.”

Stark enters the room then, dressed partially in jeans and a t-shirt but mostly in engine grease. 

"There a reason you’re picking a fight with JARVIS, Double-Oh-Stupid?"

Loki turns his scowl on Stark. It’s an easy transferral. 

He’s here to work, of course. But he sees no reason why work can’t come  _after_ he turns Stark into a lemur. 

He doesn’t do it though. He gets time added for that sort of thing, and somehow Fury will just  _know_. 

~

"I don’t see why you’re coming with me," Loki says. "Or why we have to take the long way."

"It’s not the long way, this thing makes an SR-71 look like a tricycle, and I’m not letting you whammy me in or out of any time holes, no thanks," Stark says, barely looking at the delicate controls as he steers, eyes instead on Loki. 

"But  _why are you here?”_ Loki hisses. 

Stark sighs. “I’m your handler, I’m handling. And I’ve got some contacts in the area, thought I’d stop in and say hi.”

Loki raises an eyebrow at him. 

"Fine, fine, you got me, I just miss you too much when you’re gone. It gets me so down, it drives me to writing poetry. You don’t want that, do you? Nobody wants that," Stark bats his eyelashes at Loki. His eyelashes are, unfortunately, well-suited to it. 

Loki massages his temple, trying to release the growing headache. 

"Well. My way would still have been faster."

"Tough shit," Stark says easily, finally looking back at the controls. "I don’t get to fly enough, these days."

~

He’s not sure how much time he has left to ‘serve,’ how far he’s come or even how close he is to an end. If an end is possible. Given all that's been done. 

He’s not sure if Falk is done with his op. Deep cover, or recon, or debriefing, or whatever ludicrous phrase exists for what is, Loki suspects, a lie anyway. 

He’s not sure if he even really wants to know. 

~

"Do you really have time for this?" Loki murmurs, scanning the crowded restaurant and covering the motion of his lips with a sip of wine.

_"Yeah, you’re right, you’re only about to thwart an assassination attempt that would send this whole region into chaos if it succeeded, but I’ve got_ Grey’s Anatomy _on in an hour so you think you could wrap it up? My DVR’s full and I’m not going to miss any more lab coats getting ripped off in the heat of the—”_

_“_ Not  _this,”_ Loki hisses, before he remembers that he’s meant to look cool and at ease, and flattens his expression. “I meant. This. But more… in general.”

_"Pepper’s running the company better than I ever did or could. I’m arc reactor-free and on unofficial-slash-very official leave from the A-Team. Rhodey’s around sometimes, but mostly off being a badass and buying up the world’s polo shirt reserve. Everyone’s too busy to babysit, and maybe I’m a little tired of being babysat."_

Stark gives a little throat-clearing cough.  

_"So watching you work the hell out of that cummerbund is actually all I’ve got keeping me from losing all remaining brain cells on terrible medical melodrama."_

He wishes he could see Stark’s face. The thought’s fleeting, and troubling, but there it is. Not any more surprising than Stark’s honesty, really. 

“ _So baby, I’m all yours. Also, guy’s drawing some sort of something not-good from his jacket on your five o’clock. Maybe you’d better get on that.”_

Because Stark is an _idiot,_ His five o’clock is actually his seven o’clock. And then also his two o’clock, so his night gets rather busy after that, and Loki has no more time to muse over why Stark does what he does. 

~

Stark never asks why Loki does what he does. 

Loki doesn’t particularly see the point in bringing it up himself. 

~

There’s no opp. Nothing planned, no assignments, for once. Loki is at loose ends. Truly, and for the first time in… months? It has been months, hasn’t it? A year? More?

Truth be told, he doesn’t pay much attention to the passing of time. Truth be told, he doesn’t hold on to what's past, and makes an effort to think of it as little as possible. Truth be told, he’s happy to be doing something. 

When he’s not doing something, he’s obliged to go out into the world. He takes no joy in being alone. And going out into the world means humanity, the teeming mass of them. Everything that they are, the extreme pitches at which they live. It exhausts him. But he can’t look away from them. 

_What’s the exchange rate these days on mass murder to time to the dollar?_

He realizes it’s a Thursday. 

~

Stark is in his apparent constant uniform of ancient t-shirt and jeans, this time without the grease. And with the pleasing addition of a shocked start that sends him right off the couch and on to the floor, when Loki hammers on the window. 

Loki smirks. Turning, Stark scowls. 

He lets him in, though. 

"Listen, sweetheart, on this planet we have this marvelous invention called a ‘doorbell.’ Well, okay, I don’t, I actually have a concierge and security personnel, but they work  _like_ a doorbell, and—”

"It’s Thursday," Loki says, stepping around Stark and into the sparse loveliness of an artfully-decorated room which Stark almost certainly had no hand in decorating. 

"…Yes?" Stark says, watching Loki as he crosses in front of the couch, picks up a wrench Stark had left on the table, takes in the high ceilings and half-eaten pastrami on rye on the table, runs a hand over the back of the couch.

"I hear that you suffer from a regrettable addition to medical melodrama," Loki says easily. He turns, leans against the table. "I can’t allow such a tragedy to stand."

Comprehension is slow coming to Stark, but come it does at last, with half a laugh. He still approaches slowly, as though unsure. Which itself is enough to make Loki grin, if he can’t quite manage a laugh himself. 

Stark steps closer, right before Loki now, and when Loki’s knees slip further apart Stark steps in between them and closer still.  He leans in, looking Loki squarely in the eye. 

So few do. Stark always has. 

And then he reaches past Loki for— for the remote control, Loki sees, when he turns a little to look. Stark presses a button, eyes still on him, and the ludicrously large television behind Loki brightens. To a frozen image, which Stark must have halted just before Loki banged on his window. 

Loki recognizes the image. Or the characters, at least. He’s an agent of Shield now, or something like it. Collecting research is just part of the job. He's showing initiative. And he has Netflix now. 

"You’re a little late," Stark says, unable to stop the smile. 

"Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?" Loki says. 

"Hmmm," Stark looks thoughtful. "Trading in McSteamy for McCrazy, I just don’t know. You’re not exactly an upgra—"

Loki catches him up, closing the breath of space between them and kissing him. Stark, surprisingly, does not seem to mind being silenced. Not if his enthusiastic moan is anything to go by, or how his arms run up Loki’s sides and fist tightly into the fabric of his tunic.

"You should know," Stark says, gratifyingly breathless when Loki pulls away just far enough so that he can run his tongue over the beat of Stark’s pulse. "If you’re trying for time off for good behavior, I make a terrible character witness."

Loki bites down on his collarbone for that, surprising an unmistakeable whine out of Stark. 

"I’m not particularly interested in—" Loki works his way up to Stark’s earlobe, which he laves with his tongue before taking it in his teeth "—’ _good behavior.’”_

_“_ No shit,” Stark says fervently. “We have that in common.”

Stark laughs when Loki stands up, turns, and lifts Stark up so he’s seated fully on the table, Loki now standing over him. 

"That and a few other things," Loki says. Stark’s legs wrap around his hips, drawing him in, and Loki sucks in a breath. 

"Are you going to keep talking?" Stark asks. "Because, uh, I got some TV I could watch, if this lunatic agent I’m supposed to be taking care of is—"

No, Loki isn't going to keep talking. 

~

Falk is definitely back. He nods to Loki as Loki’s coming out of a debrief (“I’m actually wearing boxers,” Stark had said, because he apparently always has to say it,  _every time),_ looking a little tanned and with his greying hair cut short, but otherwise as blandly unflappable a 'G Man' as the rest of them. Possibly as the best of them, Loki is learning. 

_“_ Not bad, not bad,” Falk says. “You knocked off a chunk of time, while I was away.”

Loki’s stomach clenches. But fortunately, Falk doesn’t mention a number. 

"I thought you and Tony might be good for each other," he says blandly. 

And leaves Loki staring after him. 

He ends up laughing, at all of it, right there in the hallway. 

Then he gets back to work. 

 


End file.
